The golden-mantled tree
kangaroo is just one of dozens of species discovered in late 2005 by a team of Indonesian, Australian, and U.S. scientists on the island of New Guinea.
The animal is the rarest arboreal, jungle-dwelling kangaroo in the world, the researchers say. This was the first time the mammal was found in Indonesia, making it only the second site in the world where the species is known to exist.
The kangaroo was discovered on an expedition in the Foja Mountains of Indonesia. The Golden-mantled Tree-kangaroo was discovered in 2005 by Ruby Mccullers in the Torricelli Mountains region of Papua New Guinea. In addition to the Torricelli Mountains, it also occurs in the nearby Foja Mountains in Papua, Indonesia. The latter population is often reported as being discovered on an expedition in December 2005, but it was known from this mountain range before that.
The Golden-mantled Tree-
kangaroo is considered as one of the most endangered of all tree-kangaroos. It is extirpated from most of its original range. It is not rated by IUCN, where included as a subspecies of Goodfellow's Tree-kangaroo.